Rik Deskin, artistic director of Eclectic Theater Company (http://www.eclectictheatercompany.org), has just let me know that he's scheduled my play THE LITTLE DEATH for a fall 2008 production in Seattle.
The play is set in 1880's New Orleans. Beautiful Hesper Darnelle enters a dangerous liaison with her guardian, Professor Meredith, then a flirtation with a young man, Alan Corbay. To protect his interest in Hesper, Meredith invites her worldly cousin Vara to join the household as his ward's companion. Vara glides among the other characters like Iago in a bustle, leaving disaster in her wake. And Hesper must find a way to break with Meredith, Alan, and Vara to save herself.
There's a brief veiled reference to the absent Mrs. Meredith, who is locked away in an asylum. Well, one of the thrills of writing plays and novels is creating one's own imaginary world. In mine, there's a 19th century Southern institution called the Magdalene Ladies' Lunatic Asylum. My September release novel, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, is set there. In one scene of the book there's a mention of a newly arrived inmate, Adele Meredith, whose husband can no longer tolerate her religious monomania. It gave me a lovely shivery feeling when this mad minor character slipped from the play into the novel, with a will of her own. This may not be the last I hear of her.
A page-turning novel about a relationship between best friends that is interrupted because of betrayal , deceit, sexual promiscuity and pregnancy happens!